S41
Fair point, well made - the actual way to do it would be to spread the "payback" over a few years, say 2-5, but of course, the MoD record is not going to give the Treasury a warm fuzzy, so that's unlikely.
That said, the amount of staff work and nugatory knobbing about that occurs twice a year just to produce the current unsatisfactory result (savings measures / options) has to stop too.
Fortunately, I've only observed the process in action, but my gast was well and truly flabbered by the randomness of it all.